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A startled laugh sounded surprisingly like a bark as it left her throat. Woof, woof, baby. “Hand signals? What?” She parted her lips and pinched her eyes slightly.
“We’re going to need a highly coded but easily articulated set of hand gestures for communication. If technology is off-limits, this is the only other way.”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t just use carrier pigeons?” she asked sarcastically, and she gave me a little shove so that my back tapped the door.
“Of course,” I deadpanned. “They’re completely unreliable.”
She relaxed her face, and just the hint of a smile curved her lips, but she didn’t step back. Thank God.
“Plus,” I added dramatically. I put one hand to her hip and pulled her even more tightly against me. “There’s also the whole bird flu thing.”
“Wes—”
I held up my free hand and showed her the inside of my fist. I held it like I was a fifth grader, determined and ready to master all the facets of a real kiss.
You know you did it too.
“What’s that mean?” she asked with frustration, a grown woman stuck playing children’s games thanks to an aggravating man, but it didn’t last long.
I’d never liked the tell part of show-and-tell in class, and this was no different.
As my lips met hers, I didn’t think there’d ever be any doubt what this hand signal meant—to either of us.
“Oh! Go, baby, go!” Georgia shouted across the field, clapping her hands and jumping up and down on her high-heeled boots like a giddy-chic teenage girl, as the rugby match started. Her eyes were on her husband, and she looked like today—and every day—she wanted to swallow him up whole. And by the tender yet fierce intensity of the return smile he gave her, it was safe to say, he only had eyes for his wife.
Georgia and Kline were quite literally beautiful together—she was his world, and she didn’t know one existed outside of him.
I want that.
God, I want that so bad.
I wanted to be loved in a deep, all-consuming way. The kind of love that made you feel invincible and special and like the huge expanse of the world had somehow, some way found time for the tiny speck that was you—because the two of you together was that important. So important that it did things for people other than the two of you. Kline and Georgia and Thatch and Cassie had those kinds of relationships. They gave the people around them energy and hope.
And most of the time, when I wasn’t having a pity party for one, that was a good thing—the best.
Wes could be that man for you, my heart told me. Sure he’s headstrong and stubborn, but he respects you and…
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.
Where had that even come from?
I glanced around the bleachers to see if anyone else had noticed my moment of temporary insanity, if I’d somehow mistakenly mumbled all the crazy things aloud. Because that’s what it had to be, thinking a man like Wes—a man who didn’t even acknowledge me as anything more than a fucking friend in mixed company—could possibly be the other half of my whole. Temporary insanity.
I looked to the field just as Wes ran by and shot one of the sexiest fucking smiles to which I had ever paid witness over his shoulder.
God.
It’d been aimed at the other guys on his team, but sweet Jesus, it slayed me all the same.
Shit. Could Wes be that guy? My guy?
He had been spending a lot of time with my daughter, teaching her football, occasionally taking her to practice, and going out of his way to do little things for her that only a child like Lexi would understand and cherish.
And the flirting and teasing and fucking with him was…incredible.
No man—no man—had ever touched me, pleasured me, understood what I needed like he did.
My mind recognized all the red flags, but my heart was doing a bang-up job of ignoring all the fucking evidence. My heart and my goddamn horny vagina—both of them, mutinous.
And that scared the shit out of me.
I forced my attention out of my head and onto the field, where the guys played on, mostly oblivious to the ludicrous happenings on the sideline. My personal treadmill, Cassie’s angry cankles, and Georgia’s completely misdirected enthusiasm.
But once my eyes caught sight of Wes, serious and determined and looking like the sexiest motherfucker I had ever seen, I could do nothing but ogle him.
His biceps rippled and stretched as he sprinted smoothly toward a player on the opposite team, the thick muscles in his thighs demanding attention with each powerful step.
Jesus. Did he really have to be that perfect? It was cold out, for fuck’s sake. I was wrapped in a blanket, and he was in shorts. They all were. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with all of them? Those hot, stupid, ridiculously muscled men.
Christ, I needed to go to more sporting events if this was what they were like.
As crazy as it sounded, it made sense that my physical attraction to Wes was so horrendously out of control. I’d known what kind of man he was—spotted it from the very first second—and still, under the spell of his swoony hazel eyes and chiseled jaw, I’d completely abandoned my six-year run as a smart woman.
Of course, then, I’d gotten to know him, and I’d based my hiatus from sanity on his serene yet quiet confidence. The way he carried himself and the way he handled himself in all things, business and personal.
And, well, as it does, all those stupid choices had led to the ultimate stupid move—I had sex with him.
He was an intuitive lover. Always knowing what I needed without me even having to tell him. Wes had a power that no one else had ever had. He could take me out of my own head to the point where I would just feel.
Feel everything. Every touch like it was a soft caress across my skin and each touch seeped into my pores until it became a part of me and I couldn’t be anything but in the moment and feeling. Just feeling.
Put simply, it had been off the charts—and still was.
Great…now I’m picturing him naked. This can’t be good in public…
As surreptitiously as possible, I glanced down at my chest to make sure I wasn’t visibly showing off my arousal to the world. All clear. If it weren’t for the little bit of padding in this bra, I might as well have had a giant neon arrow over my head letting everyone know, “This woman has sex on the brain. Wes-sex brain.”
“Kick his fluffing ass, Thatch!” Cassie shouted with both hands cupped around her mouth. Her feet were propped on the cooler in front of her—an empty cooler carted there by her husband for just this very purpose—and her skin flushed red as the bitter wind whipped around it.
“I can’t believe you’re wearing a tank top right now,” I muttered, even though I knew better than anyone that the hormones of a pregnant woman were an unpredictable thing.
Confirming that very observation, Cassie’s eyes cut to me threateningly.
Eek. “Sorry,” I muttered when the power of her stare started to feel like actual knives. Georgia bugged out her eyes at me from over Cassie’s head, and I decided it was best to metaphorically take a careful step back.
Turning back to the field and its roguishly handsome inhabitants, I watched as Thatch ran at full speed toward the opponent’s end of the pitch. He was seriously athletic, they all were, but it didn’t seem natural for a man that size to be so agile.
“Bumrush him, Thatcher! Bumbazzle him!” Georgia screamed in excitement.
As if propped on top of screws, my and Cassie’s heads turned to the right in perfect synchronization. I had to put a hand to my mouth to stop myself from completely losing it.
“What?” Georgia asked as she surveyed our wildly tickled faces.
“I think you mean bamboozle him,” I explained through my amusement. “Or break through the defenses. That would work, too.”
“Whatever,” she said with a scoff and turned her gaze back to the field. Thatch had the ball and was dodging defenders left and right. Georgia surged to her feet and hopped comically from one foot to the other like she was doing some kind of rugby-rain-dance. “We need our team to score a fry! Go, Thatch! Go, Thatch! Get the fry! Get the fry!”
Cassie and I looked at each other behind Georgia’s back, and when the dam finally broke, Cassie sounded like a wounded animal being attacked by a hyena, her hysteria was so powerful—which, in turn, made me laugh harder. She held her rounded belly with both hands as it shook violently up and down, and I watched through wet eyes, wiping vigorously at the tears streaming down my cheeks.
Georgia was undeterred by our humor-induced meltdown, but Thatch looked over just as he crossed the try line, the sound of Cassie’s laugh like a primal call into the wild for her mate.
“Wooohoooooooooo!” Georgia clapped and screamed. “We just got the fry! Woooohoooooooo!”
“Try!” I exclaimed through choking breaths. “They got a try, Georgia. Not a fry.”
She turned toward me and tilted her head to the side in confusion.
Cassie struggled to speak through her wheezing. “We’re not at McDonald’s, Wheorgie. No one’s ordering Happy Meals. We’re at a rugby game. French fries do not come on the side.”
“It’s called a try? When they score the goal?”
I grinned. “It’s just a try, honey. Not a goal or a fry. A try.”
